Just purchased a 64bit intel processor and plan to test SQL on it to see if I can tell a difference. But other than memory support I don't see much (at least for me) at this time. I do like the point you make about it may compensate for bad coding but that is the way it has always been. mask the issue with a more powerful solution instead of fixing the root cause. Eventually 64bit will get out-classed by the level of poor work done and we'll move on again.

In terms of 64-bit - I disagree with some of the points though. Increased memory will not compensate for lack of index functionality choice (i.e. Bitmap indexes, joins etc) nor partitioning at a transparent table level (as in Oracle with RANGE partitioning). Until SQL Server has that they will lose the large scale 200GB+ warehouse discussion - IMHO

As much as I love SQL Server it has dropped in the TPC scores since that MS article was published in 2003. SQL Server 2005 is in the top 10 in all areas except the 10TB TPC-H (ad-hoc/decision support) and only holds the #1 position in the 100GB TPC-H.

It is possible that the hardware used for the tests is the primary factor but I haven't looked into it in a lot of detail. I would like to see comparisons of the top DBMS platforms running on the same hardware.

This article as well as other articles on the topic specifically speak about Itanium processor. I would like to know if one can expect similar behavior on an Opteron machine.

I also have a question for the guys who have a 64 bits SQL and need to run ssis packages that pull data from Oracle 8 or 9i using either oledb for oracle or ado.net oracle data providers.Did anyone get this to work and how?